All religions and all gods are man made.
Nowhere do I see any action or acts of a god.
So it is self-evident to me that religions are made--and 'made up'--
by human beings, based on dreams, thoughts, mysticism, philosophies
and explanations of life and death, interwoven with legends, myths,
superstition, unwritten social laws, and the many taboos of the ages.
But it is all not based on any physical reality.
In a sense it has been grabbed out of thin air over the ages.
It does not mean it is worthless, it may offer many people a pacifier,
an explanation of the mysteries, of pain and misery of life, a dream of
hope. But it is all a dream, kind of a self-hypnosis that something
better awaits us after this life, wishful thinking, denial of despair.
=======================================================
It is really a failure or lack of courage to face reality:
That we do not know why matter, life and we ourselves exist.
Because we do not know, we desperately seem to need a pacifying
explanation.
So over the ages we made many, and we still make more,
all the time.
========================================================
However 'we do not know' does not mean we should
assume an all-powerful being/creator/ruler. We do not know, so
the all-powerful being created by man over the ages, is nothing more
than a man-made idea and explanation, based on nothing physical,
based on no proofs, based on no physical signs of gods anywhere.
It is all wishful thinking, not based on rational thinking, not in
agreement with science, not in agreement with what I observe and
can observe: E.g., the tsunami happened because the earth core is
cooling, there was no 'hand of God' who caused it, there was no
'hand of God' who saved or killed 100,000 little children.
It is all based on a 'belief' in what is unknown.
That means it is really all based on sand = on ideas.
It is very elaborate but in its basic essence it is all 'made up'.
Why has it been 'made up' over the ages?
To pacify and soothe, to control the population, to provide
some imaginary relief of the hard daily life, to provide
some kind of social cohesion via shared beliefs, to help support
the many unwritten laws in tribes and larger groups, etc., etc.
'Made up' does not mean that authors and spiritual leaders
necessarily lied, they just built their explanations on top of
what they inherited and learned, so the philosophies of life got
enriched, diluted, modified, re-interpreted all the time.
(That is even clear from the bible, with so many different writers,
so many often contradictory interpretations and explanations.)
New interpretations: That is also what many over the ages have been
doing. But that is fine, that gives their life meaning.
It matches and agrees with their own thinking, life experiences, etc.,
and they use creative thinking to build on that.
But those beliefs will never be mine because these religious beliefs
are man-made, historically grown beliefs divorced from physical
reality, and really only one set of beliefs out of the multitude
designed by man over the ages.
Why should I believe in somebody else's beliefs?
My 'beliefs' are based on what I can observe and understand, not in
beliefs inherited from others - about the unknown.
So I am free to walk my own path.
In a sense that is also what many are doing, but mostly within
the bounds/realm of Christianity.
For me, there is no hold of 'inherited beliefs' on me whatsoever.
Of course one can learn from the past, one can learn from religions,
but these can never tell me what to believe and how to live.
That choice is mine.
And my choice is a clear rejection of Christianity and its beliefs
(as well as other religions that claim to know the unknowable),
the reasons are described in the list of my self-evident truths.
That is irrevokable because it is based on personal enlightenment,
insights and understanding that cannot be revoked.
As Galileo's belief in the earth not being the center of the solar
system and even of the universe, was --in his mind-- irrevokable.
Because he understood, he understood what he observed, he understood
physical reality.
The choice between what he understood from physical reality and what he
understood from what the church=religion wanted him to believe, was
simple.
With regards,
Michael M Terra
.
|
